Crossing the Deadline (15 page)

PART THREE

HOMEWARD BOUND

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

March 9, 1865

The colonel surveys the scene for a while longer and finally turns to the prisoners. “While in Selma, early this morning, orders came down that when the waters of the Alabama recede into her banks and we're able to get a steamship to Cahaba, seven hundred of you will be released to go home.” The colonel turns and walks down the steps and out of sight.

Every prisoner, even some with hardly any energy left, lifts his head and smiles. Soon the walls of the prison are shaking with cheers. Nobody seems to believe what we've heard. Seven hundred of us are going home!

Johnny Walker jumps on top of the roost and begins dancing. He flicks his legs into the air, puts one hand on his hip, and thrusts the other over his head. He twirls counterclockwise slowly and taps his feet against the roof of
the roost. Everybody claps to keep him on rhythm.

“What's he doing?” I laugh.

“
That
is called a Scottish jig,” Sergeant Survant explains. “Private Walker's originally from Scotland.”

Rumors spread as to who is being released and why.

“They don't have enough food to hold us here any longer,” someone argues.

“True. They cut rations in half this last month.”

“Perhaps the war's ending,” someone suggests. “No sense in keeping us here if there's no war.”

I can hardly allow myself to think the war may be over. Seven hundred of us are going home, and it doesn't matter why or how. Only who.

The floodwaters recede over the next few days and leave behind a field of mud. It's thick and clings to everything.

Before the prison ground is totally dry, the commander sends word for all the men from Ohio and Michigan “well enough to carry themselves on their own power” to be in formation in two hours. An hour later we hear a prolonged steam whistle. An Ohio man calls up at a guard standing on the southeast corner, “Is that the boat taking us home?”

The guard cradles his musket in his left arm and gives a thumbs-up sign with his right hand.

In another hour, the men from Ohio and Michigan are in formation, as best as they can be among the debris and logs, eager to leave. Colonel Jones appears on the walkway. “We'll do this as quickly as we can . . .,” he begins. “We have rolls organized by company. When we call your company's name, line up at the gate and give the guard your last name. He will direct you to one of five tables outside. You are to step up to the table. You'll receive an envelope with all the items taken from you when you arrived. Take the envelope, check the contents, sign your name, and walk toward the dock at the end of Capitol Avenue.”

Colonel Jones salutes, turns, and leaves the platform.

A guard steps forward. “We'll begin with Michigan's cavalry. Everyone else, at ease.” We watch in envy as the line moves through the gate. Occasionally, men stop to hug friends being left behind.

As the Michigan boys file out, the men left inside sing “Battle Cry of Freedom,” the very song I played as a solo for Governor Morton when he visited Centerville. We look more like filthy pigs in a sty than proud soldiers from war, but there's nothing that can wipe the smiles off our faces. After the Ohio fellows leave, the prison looks spacious. An hour later the boat's whistle blares again. We sit in silence
and wait to hear what we know is coming: Michigan and Ohio boys cheering loud enough to wake snakes. They are going home.

With hundreds of men gone there's ample room for sleeping. I lean against a log and stare, for what seems like hours, at the sky. Even after closing my eyes for twenty minutes, sleep doesn't come. I reposition myself multiple times. “Still awake, Stephen?” Sergeant Survant asks.

His question makes me laugh. “You too?” I ask. “Guess everybody's too excited.”

“Yeah,” he says. “But all the Indiana boys are still here.”

Sleep finally catches up and overtakes me. Mother is quick to appear, and we walk arm in arm away from Castle Morgan. She's so happy to see me. I turn for one final glance at the horrific place that held me captive for six months only to discover my brother, Robert, is the only prisoner left inside. He's standing just beyond the deadline inside Castle Morgan, two guards blocking his escape with their rifles. The dream scares me awake.

The exodus does not end with the first ship. Several more groups leave over the course of the next ten days. Each batch gone opens more space in the prison and in the roosts.

Three weeks after the first release, I hear my state's name
called. “Indiana and Tennessee are next to leave,” a sergeant announces. I lie back onto the dirt ground, stare up at the gray clouds, and begin thinking about leaving the foul water, the starvation, the filth, the cold, and the death of Castle Morgan and swapping them for home. I'll never think of the word “home” the same way again. I close my eyes and imagine Mother's arms around me. I can feel her warmth and hear her heart pounding in her chest. I see Mrs. Gates on her porch, sewing tiny American flags, her famous pumpkin pie cooling on the banister nearby. She's baked the pie just for me. Dutch is waiting on the steps of the Mansion House, an orange behind his back. But this time, he doesn't make me guess what it is. He tosses it to me in the air and welcomes me home with a hug. Home. Home. I'm going home. I begin to cry, quietly at first, but I can't control myself and it builds to an uncontrollable sob.

* * *

The steam whistle blows, as the other whistles had, near ten a.m. By noon, all able men are in formation. Nearly one hundred of us from the 9th Indiana file out the gate and into tents to claim our envelopes.

“Name?” a sergeant asks when I enter my assigned tent. “Stephen M. Gaston. S-T-E-P-H-E-N,” I spell loudly, remembering my first day here.

The Sergeant thumbs through a box. “Check the contents,” he says, pushing an envelope across the small table to me. My name's written across the top. It's the same one I was given and that I signed when we arrived from Sulphur Branch Trestle.

After picking up the envelope, my heart sinks. “It's light,” I say.

“What do you mean?” the sergeant asks.

I open the flap and see it contains only my pocket watch, comb, and two dollars. “There's no book in here. One was put in when I came.” I don't know where the courage comes from, but my voice grows tall and thick. “I surrendered a book in October.”

“Calm down,” the sergeant says. He points to a line scribbled across the front and reads the writing. “One book taken by”—the sergeant pauses and brings the envelope closer to his eyes—”the name's smudged.” He turns it for me to see.

The name is impossible to read. “Nobody had a right to take the book out of here. It was mine.”

“It's a lousy book, Sunday Soldier,” he snaps. “Move on to the boat and be glad you're going home.”

My body tenses and shakes from anger. What right did anybody have to take it? I could leave without the watch or the money, but not without the one thing I was ordered to bring home.

A second line has formed outside the tent. It's not headed in the direction of the boat, but toward Mrs. Gardner's house. As the line shortens, I see everybody's hugging her, and I take my place at the end.

“God bless you,” she says to each soldier.

“No, God bless you,” the soldier in front of me says. “Half of us wouldn't be alive without all you did.”

When he moves, Mrs. Gardner reaches for me with both arms. Dirt covers the front of her light blue dress so thick, it looks as if she's used it to clean a stall. She notices my glance. “It's from the men saying good-bye,” she explains. “It must have been terribly muddy in the Castle.”

I nod and try to force a smile.

“What's wrong, Stephen?” she asks. “You should be overjoyed. You're going home. You'll see your mother soon.”

I show her the nearly empty envelope. “My copy of
David
Copperfield.
Somebody signed it out and didn't return it. Nothing else in here mattered to me.”

Mrs. Gardner points to the steps leading to the porch. “Yes, yes. Here it is,” she says, picking my book up and patting the cover with her hand. “I'm sorry you worried so.”

“You took it? Why?”

“Colonel Henderson entrusted it to me. I knew it must be something very special by the way you carried it through town six months ago. I never saw anybody hold a book like you did, and I didn't want anything to happen to it. I told the colonel I was sure they'd return all the items when the soldiers left, but, as a special favor, I asked if he would let me watch over the book for you”—she pauses—”just in case.”

“I never thought I'd see any of my things again,” I confess.

“To be honest, I didn't trust all the guards either. That's why keeping the book safe for you was important to me. I've been waiting a long time for your release,” she says. “When it was announced that the Indiana boys were going home today, I kept an eye out so I could give it to you personally.”

A wave of guilt swallows me. I don't know why, but I start crying, again. Union soldiers had taken her son near Richmond. Yet she did so much for all the men in Castle Morgan. Mother once told me that the best thing to do when
someone has been kind to you is to look them in the eye and say, “Thank you.”

Mother's voice whispers in my ear,
Simply say, “thank you.” It will be enough, Stephen.
I take the book, wipe away the tears with the back of my wrist, and say, “Thank you, Mrs. Gardner.”

She tries to speak, but her jaw quivers so much, she can't. I wonder if she's thinking of her son and how he won't be coming home. She touches the side of my face, collects her skirt with her hands, and runs up the stairs and into her house.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

March 28, 1865

The boat pulls away from Cahaba's dock at four o'clock in the afternoon. William Peacock wraps his arm about my neck and whispers, “We're going home, Stephen. We made it.” The ride upriver to Selma is slow and uneventful. But for the first time in six months, we see signs of normal life—barns, roads, large trees bursting with splotches of green, and people turning the soil for spring plantings.

I sleep next to Peacock and Big Tennessee on the boat that night in Selma. The next morning we walk from the boat to the train depot between two rows of armed guards. “You're headed to Vicksburg,” one of them tells us. A short lady with tangled hair and hard rough hands gives each man a small cloth sack just before we board. Inside are four pieces of hardtack and a handful of dried meat, two days' rations,
enough to last us through Alabama. After so long, it feels odd not having to work for food.

Until yesterday, most of our thoughts were of survival. We'd gathered firewood, cooked meals, tried to stay warm, and nursed one another back to health. Every day our thoughts were:
What has to be done to stay alive one more day?
Now each hour is filled with joy. We rest, have rations handed to us, and realize every minute takes us closer to home.

There are two small windows on each side of the train car. We take turns staring out the windows or between a few cracks in the walls. It's hard to turn away from the sights passing by. We overtake Southern town after Southern town: Potter, Browns, Faunsdale, Gallion. A half-burned barn appears in one field. A pile of rubble where a farmhouse once stood emerges in another. Some of the buildings have pockmarks from being struck with artillery shells. Every village looks aged by the war.

The train rolls to a stop just beyond the town of Demopolis. When our car door opens, an officer explains the situation. “We had a derailment late last night. A small section of rails split from the cross ties. Five cars from that train tipped over and are no longer usable. We loaded as many of those passengers as we could onto the train's
remaining cars. However, we still have eighty men left to board with you.”

We're crowded already. But not as bad as at Castle Morgan. And eighty more people, evenly spread across fifteen cars, means each car will get just five or six additional men.

“Sir!” someone yells from the next car. “How far to Mississippi?”

“Near 'bout forty miles,” he answers.

A “Hip-Hip” rings out and is quickly followed by a loud “Hooray!”

“I'll never be so happy to leave a place,” Sergeant Survant says.

Our joy is tempered when Big Tennessee sees the first man coming to join our train. “My God, Stephen,” he says faintly.

“What?” I ask.

Big Tennessee doesn't answer. He jumps from the boxcar and hurries toward a man walking our way. When we look out to see what caused his alarm, we can't believe our eyes.

If we'd had it bad at Cahaba, these fellows had walked straight out the gates of hell. Their cheekbones jut above hollowed jaws. Their eyes are dark as pitch and sink deep into narrow skulls.

Although he's able to put one foot in front of the other, the man appears to know little of what's going on around him, where he is, or where he's going. He's staring through unfocused eyes.

“Help this fellow up, Stephen,” Big Tennessee says. It doesn't take much to lift the man onto the train, and eight others soon follow. They're as light as leaves and brittle as fine pottery. One boy from Rushville takes pity on the fellow sitting beside him. “Here,” he says. “I saved a little of the hardtack they gave me in Selma. You can have it.”

“Here's some pork,” Sergeant Survant says, quickly breaking a piece into two parts. He hands a piece to the two men sitting on either side of him.

The man looks up at Sergeant Survant, confusion written across his eyes. “I have nothing to give you in exchange.”

“I don't want anything in return. Don't care much for pork anyways,” Sergeant Survant lies. He ate it for six months in Cahaba and was happy to have it.

“Can't remember the last time somebody shared food,” the man says. He takes the pork, and it's gone in double-quick time.

“Slow down,” Sergeant Survant insists. “You don't want to eat too fast.” He breaks his last piece into smaller sections
and slows the man's eating by handing him one tiny sliver at a time.

The man swallows each piece as fast as it's offered.

Soon the soldiers added to our car are settled in, and each have had a bite to eat. Several manage slight smiles for a split second. We know they're grateful to be with us and to have something in their stomachs.

We sit, staring at the strangers, unable to take our eyes off them. It's impossible to understand how they can still be alive. Everyone at Cahaba who looked this bad died. Sergeant Survant asks one of the men, “Where were they holding you fellows?”

“Andersonville,” one says softly, “Georgia.” I remember Colonel Jones's comment about that prison just weeks ago.

Repairs on the damaged rails take longer than expected. Our stop turns into an overnight stay. In the morning we chug west, making our guests as comfortable as we can. How any of us have food to spare is a miracle, but pieces of food appear periodically from ration sacks. Two hours later we pass a sign that reads, KEWANEE, MISSISSIPPI. Somebody says, “We're out of Alabama, boys. One state closer to home.”

A little while later the train slows to a crawl as we
approach Meridian. Just beyond town, we pull onto a side track to refuel.

Someone yells the word “rations,” and it is repeated down the row of the train car. Men pour out from where they have been resting in order to stretch their arms and legs. We tell the men from Andersonville to stay on board and save their energy. Only a few men from each car are needed to get the food. Two other men and I walk toward the designated area, a church on the edge of town.

Before the church we pass a house with a yard framed by a fence made of split timber. A boy, about my age, stands in the side yard, digging soil. He turns a batch of red clay dirt and knocks it loose with his spade. He examines it and tosses a rock from it onto a nearby pile. When the boy sees the line of men passing, he stops, turns, and rests his arms on the top of his shovel. By the looks of the growing pile of rocks, the soil is half stone.

When the Confederate guards who are leading the way pass by, the boy wipes his brow with a handkerchief and gives them a quick tip of the hat. He smiles warmly and nods their way. When those of us who have been in Castle Morgan come by, his smile withers. He glares at us as if we're worth less than the rocks he's discarding from the soil.

We arrive at a church where a long table is piled with sacks tied with string. Each one contains enough hardtack and pieces of salt pork to feed ten men.

When we return to the train, the Andersonville men frantically grab for the bags. “Hey, hey, hey, slow down,” Sergeant Survant warns. “Only give them half of a hardtack and a bite or two of the meat,” he orders.

“We were down to almost no food back in Georgia,” one of them says. “We think that's why they let us out.” We hand them only a share of their rations, and they're as grateful to us as we were to Amanda Gardner. In seconds their portions are gone.

“Hey, slow down,” Sergeant Survant repeats to a fellow near him. “I'll tell you what I'll do. When your rations are gone, you can have half my meat,” Survant says, tearing his chunk into smaller pieces. “But I'm going to save it and give it to you in an hour or so.”

* * *

The train refuels, and we rest in Meridian overnight. The guards allow us to walk as far as a nearby creek. This is the first time we're able to get farther than a few feet from another human being, and it feels glorious.

We leave the next morning for Jackson, slowly following the sun across the sky. A Confederate sergeant tells us, “You'll have to walk the final miles from Jackson to Vicksburg. A boat will take you up the Mississippi from there.”

“How far's the walk from Jackson to Vicksburg?” Big Tennessee asks.

“Several days,” the sergeant answers. “Depending on how fit you are. It's near forty miles, but you'll have to do it all on foot unless you absolutely can't walk. There are a few Union ambulances for the critical.”

There's no way most of the Andersonville men can walk one mile, let alone forty.

“They'll be able to rest as long as they need in Jackson before starting out,” the guard assures us. He glances at those from Andersonville and pats one on the knee. “There's no hurry, fellows. Stay there until you have the strength to make it to Vicksburg.”

Late that night, we make Jackson. A guard opens our door and says, “Don't get out for any reason. These townsfolk will shoot you in a heartbeat if you get on their property.”

“Why did we stop?” someone asks.

“Another derailment ahead,” he answers. “The tracks go on another eight miles past Jackson. That's where the holding
camp is. While we're stopped here, stay inside the train. Don't get out while we're this close to town,” he warns.

We sit for a couple hours before the wheels start turning. An hour later, we come to our final stop. This time, when we look out, campfires and crude shelters dot the landscape.

A guard comes to our door. “You can sleep in the train if you like or hop out. Makes me no never mind. The engine won't start up before morning, so suit yourselves for the night.” He points into the darkness. “Over there is the road leading to Vicksburg. Just stay on that road for three, maybe four days, and you'll be in Vicksburg.”

Excitement and reservations wrestle in my mind as I think about seeing Mother soon. Every night, hour, and minute brings me closer to home. Centerville is a long ways off, but a three days' walk is all that stands between me and Vicksburg—and the ship that will carry me home.

The next morning those of us who were at Sulphur Branch Trestle and have gained enough strength to begin the journey decide to travel together. The commissary issues us everything we need to bake cornbread for the trip. Once it is out of the fire and cool, we divvy the bread up along with three days' worth of pork and strike out for Vicksburg.

“Don't wander far off the road,” we're told. “Ten miles to
Clinton and then ten more to Bolton. With luck, you'll make Bolton the first day. Union control doesn't begin until Camp Fisk, just before Vicksburg.”

We haven't walked twenty minutes when a cold rain begins—and we're all reminded of the flood at the Castle.

“It's a sign, Stephen!” Big Tennessee yells out.

“A sign?” I ask. “What kind of sign?”

“It's a sign the good Lord doesn't think we got enough water back at the Castle.”

“Couldn't care any less,” William Peacock says. “As long as we aren't forced to spend another second sitting in river water.”

Our goal is to make Clinton before lunch, which we do. But by the time we arrive, Peacock is exhausted. “Never thought I'd say this after all that time in the Castle, but I'm too tired to eat.”

“You and me both,” Sergeant Survant says as we pick out spots and spread rubber blankets on the ground. We agree to nap for two hours before heading out again. As we settle in, I call over to William, “What's my first meal going to be back home? You have ten guesses.”

“Is it a meat?” he guesses first.

“No.”

“Vegetable?”

“No.”

“Is it sweet?”

“Yes. That's three.”

“Fruit?”

“No. You have six more guesses.”

I wait for several seconds before opening my eyes. Peacock's sound asleep, too tired to play the guessing game.

It's after dark when we arrive in Bolton at a makeshift camp, but we're excited to be one day closer to home.

The miles pass more slowly on the second day as we stop frequently to give Peacock time to rest. “Go on,” he urges. “I'll catch up later.”

“Nope,” we all say. “We stay together.”

* * *

Even at our slow pace, it doesn't deter our resolve to make Camp Fisk in three days. We know we're close when we approach a pontoon bridge spanning the Black River. A neatly printed sign reads, UNION TERRITORY: CAMP FISK (7 MILES). We quicken our pace.

The scent of smoke thickens the air, and the clattering
sounds of the camp increase the farther we walk. We suspect Camp Fisk is hidden just beyond the next hill. Big Tennessee notices something appears to be rising up from the ground.

“Look, fellows!” he yells, and points straight ahead. With each step toward the crest of the hill, a patch of blue and white rises higher and higher until we're all able to view the American flag in all its splendor. We crest the hill and take in the sweeping scene before us: a vast field, dotted with hundreds, maybe a thousand soldiers, surrounded by a wire fence. And topped with that brilliant flag.